Author: Henry Parker

Publisher: Forgotten Books

Published: 2017-07-24

Total Pages: 764

ISBN-13: 9780282557249

Excerpt from Ancient Ceylon: An Account of the Aborigines and of Part of the Early Civilisation During this period, however, little new information regard ing it has been published in England otherwise than in the Journals of various Societies, with the exception of some excellent studies of its natural history a work by Professor Rhys Davids on the Ancient Coins and Measures and two books prepared for the Government, one by Mr. Smither, the former Government Architect, containing an architectural description of the dagabas at Anuradhapura, and the other, by Dr. Edward Muller, giving a first account of the ancient inscriptions. Evidently the time has arrived when part of the other recently obtained knowledge of the country should be pre sented to the world. My employment in the Irrigation Depart ment from the middle of 1873 to the end of 1904 having given me opportunities of acquiring some information of the interior of the island, I have therefore prepared the present work, which describes some phases of the early civilisation, beginning with the history, life, and religion of the aborigines, and ending, as regards local matters, with the village games. Although the subjects included in it are dealt with in a disconnected manner, it will be seen that they advance from the primitive stages to more recent times. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.